A recent alternative to golf course developments was recently proposed for south Palm Springs.

Its main feature shown on the well rendered site plan is a huge plain studded with hundreds of olive trees upwind from downtown. Is this an idea that hailed from the new urban agriculture school of design? It's simply an olive orchard and wrap homes around it. The problem is nobody wants to live next to an olive orchard and here's why.

In the 1960s, Tucson banned planting any more fruiting olive trees in their city. There were already many of them on streets and gardens left over from its early Spanish colonial heritage. Yet even those remnants planted centuries ago were enough to cause a serious allergy problem at bloom time. Because so many move to the southwest for the air quality there is concern that excess pollen can cause natural air pollution. The solution is simply to avoid the problem by halting planting of fruiting olive in residential areas and urban centers.

Similar scenarios happened all over the Southwest as population swelled. Every year olive bloom season released its usual clouds of pollen because this is a wind pollinated tree and does not rely on insects. In fact, like pines, wind pollinated trees make so much pollen you can see it in the air or on the surface of shiny black cars. It's heavy pollen that does not travel far from the trees unless the wind is blowing. That allows intense concentrations of olive pollen to be swept into flight with the first gust of the morning breeze.

This old fruiting olive orchard is well outside Rome to ensure the pollen doesn't drift into the city.(Photo: Maureen Gilmer/Special to The Desert Sun)

This happened in old Palm Springs, which explains why they started clipping the olive trees into poodles and hat boxes. Clipping removes the flowering stems and stops the process. Though expensive, it's the reason so many old trees remain in town while elsewhere they were moved or cut down to solve the problem. It has recently been proven that newcomers with no pre-existing allergy to olives actually developed sensitivity once they move to olive tree rich communities. This suggests there may be a cost to planting such an abnormal concentration of olive pollen so close to a high end international resort.

Landscape architects designing large sites know that tree planting can have a lot of impact on the area around them. Sometimes that impact travels off site to bother folks down the block. That's why every city has an approved tree list. It's interesting that most inland areas of the southwest do not approve of planting fruiting olives in the city. Most ban them altogether. There's too much risk of allergens to those out here for respiratory health, and the potential for actually creating sensitivity in non-allergic individuals could be a devastating consequence.

In recent years the effort to find an alternative to golf for large site amenities may begin turning to gimmicks. They aren't well thought-out gimmicks either. First of all, even olive trees need water especially if they are to produce quality marketable olives. And how are we to manage the ground plain under the trees that is little more than exposed blowing sand cleared and leveled by dozers, followed by diggers and trenchers? In other cities the crows have come to reside in olive orchards as they wait for the crop to ripen, creating a horrible mess on cars and houses nearby.

Olive trees allowed to grow tall and wide naturally will produce a tremendous amount of heavy pollen at this home site.(Photo: Maureen Gilmer/Special to The Desert Sun)

Over my 35 years in California horticulture and landscape design from Los Angeles to the Bay Area, I have seen a lot. That's why I'm always nervous about new ideas for large scale monoculture projects that are based on ideas not yet vetted in the long term (at least 30 years). This is growing more and more common. Installing olive orchards in the middle of a desert of houses and swimming pools does not respect the people of that city. It dooms them to an annual two month bloom season of allergy hell.

This is what happens when out-of-towners come into a desert and try to change it into something else. I can say for sure that 50% of urban agriculture ideas I see used today will fail due to perfectly logical problems. So if someone tries to plant stick hundreds of olive trees upwind from my million dollar home, you can bet I'd be in a real hurry to call the city.